Each of the six finalist student teams may include any number of graduate and undergraduate students and must include a Supervising Faculty Member. A team may also involve advisory and support personnel, who can include, for example, high school students, business professionals, and community leaders. Each team must designate a Team Leader, who must be a student.

The interdisciplinary nature of this year's program supports the formation of teams of students from marketing, advertising, business, engineering, communication, radio-television-film, journalism and other similar academic disciplines. In order to achieve an interdisciplinary mix of talent and interests, NASA encourages the formation of teams of students with more than one academic focus. Teaming of students from different universities is acceptable as well.

The NMB'03 program will partner each finalist team with professional scientists, engineers and administrators working in the Johnson Space Center's Exploration Office, which is part of NASA's Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS) Strategic Enterprise.

Only proposals from teams of students enrolled in accredited American institutions of higher education will be considered. Team members do not need to be citizens of the United States.